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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Weekend Recap and a Decorative Doily... (WHAT?!)

This past weekend, Mr. Fo and I took a quick road trip to Asheville, NC. Asheville is a wonderful town filled with the following: 1) The famous Biltmore Estate 2) 9 different Beer Breweries 3) Hippies. Tons of hippies. 4) Amazing natural and organic food. 5) Mountains. 6) Independent coffee houses (i.e. coffee houses that have signs in the window that say "Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks.")

Mr. Fo and his family have a special connection to Asheville as they lived there for several years while Mr. Fo was in elementary school. They still go back every summer to play golf at the GORGEOUS Biltmore Forest Country Club.

I tagged along this time, and I am so glad I did.

After hearing about Asheville's growing beer brewing obsession, we decided a tour of local breweries was a must do. Asheville Brews Cruise - here we come! We hopped in a van with our fabulous tour guide Shawna and 12 other beer lovers and headed out for a beer filled day of fun.

I am only going to bore you with my favorite brewery, Pisgah, which is an organic beer brewery. Healthy Beer - Ummm awesome. To give you an idea what our tour was like, here's a picture:

That pretty much sums it up. Dude in a t-shirt, drinking a beer, giving us the most laid back tour I have ever had. Pisgah's whole thing is: We don't seek you out, if you want our beer, you have to come get it. (i.e. When I asked how I would get a keg of Pisgah beer in Charlotte for a party, he said, "You would have to drive up here and get it." OHHHH SNAP.) They only distribute within Asheville and in a few nearby towns. Lucky for us Charlotteans, we can get Pisgah at Duckworth's, but not consistently. It's like, Dear Pisgah - you're hard to obtain, therefore I desperately want you. It's pure genius! I have to have it.

We bought some souvenir Pisgah pint glasses.

And we brought home a Pisgah "growler," as they call it.

After our fantabulous beer tour, we headed to the lovely Biltmore Forest Country Club, where we would be spending the night. They have these adorable little rooms with sloped ceilings and tons of old school charm. The rooms include flat screen TVs though, because it is 2010.

We took a golf cart out on the GORGEOUS golf course and enjoyed the "15 degrees cooler than Charlotte" weather. We also had more beer, which was totally necessary.

Due to said additional beer, we may have accidentally slept through our alarm for dinner. And by slept through, I don't mean 10 minutes. I mean our reservations were at 7:30 and we woke up at 8:45. YIKES. But it's cool, the lovely folk at Biltmore Forest were understanding, and I was able to eat one of the most delicious meals I have had in months. Scallops over lobster ravioli.

Almost as great as the meal were THESE:

In my sleepy state, I first thought this was a napkin that was stuck on my drink glass that I couldn't get off. After a closer view, I realized they were decorative doily thingies that held in the moisture on your glass.

Naturally, I did what any normal diner would do at this moment. I severely questioned our waitress asking questions such as: 1) What are these mysterious things? 2) Do they come in different colors? 3) Do you reuse them? 4) And finally, can you go into the back and get me some to take home? I must blog about these.

And of course, when I got back home, I immediately googled these fascinating items. It seems their official name is "Stem Wraps." They can be found Here, Here and on Amazon - $125 for $30 - what a deal!

Their main purpose? To absorb condensation. You know how annoying it is to get water on your pants when your glass "sweats." Genius, I tell you. I wish I had invented them. Then I would use them at my Caribbean island home. (You know, because I would be rich from inventing them?)

Have you ever heard or seen these stem wraps?

So, this is a bit of a random post, I must admit. But I wanted to share my Asheville trip and the fabulous stem wraps. So I did...it wasn't so bad was it?